Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(69)

Cox had dropped onto a couch before Deese got out of the bedroom and now she bounced to her feet and mimed punching Deese. “Now we’re doing something. Now we’re getting there. Nobody gets hurt. And we’re out of Vegas, and fuck all those marshals.”

Cole said, “Sounds like Smith knew all about what happened.”

“Yeah, he did,” Deese said. “I gotta think on that. That motherfucker. Maybe get the money and eat his liver anyway.”





CHAPTER


SEVENTEEN


Tremanty was frustrated. Not angry, exactly, but unhappy, and as he sat next to Rae he was drumming his fingers on the tabletop. He had an overnight bag next to his shoe. His suit was rumpled and he hadn’t shaved. “You’re telling me that they know you’re here.”

Lucas nodded. “Probably. There are a couple of ways they could know, so we have to believe they do. Even if they don’t, Santos could have scared them off.”

“They could be most of the way to Idaho by now. Hell, they could already be there.”

“The Vegas cops might get Santo’s prints off the brass he left at the shooting. If they do, his ass is in a crack,” Bob said.

“Yeah, yeah, but I’m not holding my breath,” Tremanty said.


THEY WERE still talking, arguing, when a call came in for Lucas. He checked his phone and saw that it was from the Marshal Service’s district office. Lucas, Bob, and Rae had checked in with the Vegas marshal on the way into town. He answered, “Yeah? Davenport.”

“Davenport. This is Carl Young. Listen, we got a call, a woman trying to get ahold of you, and she asked for you by name. She said it’s a matter of life and death. She said I should tell you the name Deese. I understand that’s your cannibal guy. She wants your phone number and will call me back in two minutes. Should I give it to her?”

“Yes . . . Hell, yes! Tell her to call.”

Lucas hung up, turned to the others, and said, “A woman called, mentioned ‘Deese.’ She’s gonna call me.”

Tremanty yanked his phone out of his pocket and pushed a number on speed dial. A moment later he said, “I need to trace a call incoming to Las Vegas. I can give you the receiving phone, it’s on now. We need to know the location of the caller.”

Lucas showed him the screen on his phone, the number, and Tremanty recited it into his phone, then repeated it. When he hung up, his frustration disappearing like cigarette smoke, he said, “Been here less than an hour and got us a tipster. Am I good or am I good?”

“We don’t really know that yet, do we?” Rae said. Her tone was enigmatic, and they all looked at her for a moment before deciding not to press her.


TWO OR THREE minutes later, Lucas’s phone rang, an unknown number. “Davenport,” he said again.

“Is this Marshal Davenport?” A woman’s voice, soprano, but with some whisky in it.

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

“Clayton Deese will be in the Chipotle restaurant at the Show Boat mall at exactly seven o’clock. He’ll only be there for five minutes. He has a beard, and he’s wearing a gray shirt, blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a red-and-blue LA Dodgers baseball cap. You can’t call me back because I’m throwing this phone in the toilet.”

Click.

Tremanty’s phone buzzed. “Yeah?” He listened, then said, “Well, shit. But, thank you.”

“Where is it?” Rae asked.

“On Las Vegas Boulevard north of here. Then it died.”

“She said she threw it in the toilet,” Lucas said. “And she said Deese is going to be at the Show Boat mall, at a Chipotle restaurant, at seven o’clock.” He glanced at his phone. “We’ve got nineteen minutes to get there, wherever there is.”

“I know where it is,” Bob said. “You can check a map on your phone, but I saw it right up the boulevard. North of here—where that phone was. Maybe three minutes away.” They were all hustling along behind Bob. “Not counting how long it takes to get to the self-parking.”

They ran, weaving through the slot machines on Caesars main floor, setting off whirlpools of unhappy gamblers.


IN THE CAR, Tremanty asked, “Call the Vegas cops?”

Lucas: “What do you think? If we have a bunch of cops flooding the place, we’ll never see him. He’ll see them first and be outta there.”

Bob said, “We’ll really stink up the place if we don’t tell them at all. We gotta tell somebody or we’ll have major diplomatic problems.”

“You’re right,” Lucas said. And Tremanty nodded.

Lucas, in the passenger seat while Bob drove, took out his wallet and found a card for Tom Harvey, the homicide cop they’d met over Beauchamps’s dead body. Harvey had scribbled his personal cell number on the back. Lucas punched it into his phone as Bob ran a red light turning north onto Las Vegas Boulevard.

Rae was looking at her iPad, with a map of the mall’s interior on it; she spotted the Chipotle’s.

Harvey answered, and Lucas identified himself and told him what was happening. Harvey said, “Jesus, Davenport, we gotta have somebody on the scene. Let me round up all the plainclothes guys I got—”

“If the tip’s right, he’ll be there for only five minutes, starting at seven o’clock,” Lucas said. “We’re on our way, with an FBI agent, and will be there in three or four minutes, but we’ve got to park and then find the Chipotle’s. So it’s now fourteen minutes, no, thirteen minutes to seven, so do what you gotta do, but we can’t have a bunch of uniforms running through the place, waving their guns around.”